Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser Spaceplane Makes Important Flight Test

Sierra Nevada is developing a spaceplane called the Dream Chaser that's designed to launch on top of a rocket, soar into low-Earth orbit where it will deliver cargo to the International Space Station, and then fly back down through Earth's atmosphere to land on a runway similar to the space shuttle. Things have been rocky for Sierra since the Dream Chaser skidded on the runway during a landing test in 2013. But today, the company conducted its first captive carry test since that accident—hopefully a sign of good things to come.

This morning the Dream Chaser was lifted under a Boeing Vertol 234-UT tandem-rotor heavy-lift helicopter, a civilian version of the Army's CH-47 Chinook. The 234-UT, capable of 120 knots (138 mph), flew with the Dream Chaser around the dry lakebed that surrounds Edwards Air Force Base and NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert of California. (The flight begins around the 50-minute mark in the video below.)

Sierra Nevada collected telemetry and avionics data from today's flight, which follows tow tests conducted in previous weeks that saw the Dream Chaser fly down a runway at about 60 mph behind a truck. The company plans to conduct one more captive carry test before a drop test scheduled for September that will see the Dream Chaser fall from the 234-UT helicopter for a free flight and landing test.

Optimistically, the Dream Chaser could launch on a ULA Atlas V rocket for the first time as soon as 2019 and ferry supplies to the ISS in 2020.The Dream Chaser is designed to be an autonomous spaceplane first, navigating to the ISS and landing all on its own, although Sierra Nevada hopes to eventually develop a crew version of the craft with life support systems that could carry people to orbit. NASA has awarded the company a contract under the second phase of the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) which covers resupply missions from 2019 to 2024.

A concept image of the Dream Chaser in launch configuration.

Sierra Nevada Space Systems

The Dream Chaser, based on a NASA design concept called HL-20 from around 1990, has been a long time coming, but recent years were marked by a setback. In 2013, Sierra Nevada conducted an approach and landing test. The craft, running on autonomous systems, failed to deploy part of its landing gear and skidded across the runway. While this set Sierra Nevada back in development, it also served as an important indication that the spacecraft can protect its cargo and critical systems even if it skids on landing.

Another gut-punch came in 2014. By then Sierra Nevada had been competing for five years to win a contract for NASA's Commercial Crew program, but NASA passed over the Dream Chaser and selected only Boeing and SpaceX vehicles to begin ferrying astronauts to the space station.

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Now Sierra Nevada is back and eyeing resupply missions to the ISS starting in 2020. Using a spaceplane, rather than a capsule like SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, will allow Sierra Nevada to land and reuse the vehicle many times. (SpaceX has also started recovering and reusing its Dragon capsules.) An even greater long-term benefit is the Dream Chaser could be refurbished to carry a crew of seven or eight, something Sierra Nevada is already conducting early research and design work to achieve. In the future, if the Dream Chaser is approved by NASA for crewed flight, the spaceplane could be considered for a mission fly astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope for refurbishing and repairs that would keep the space telescope operational through the 2020s.

For now, though, Sierra Nevada needs to prove their Dream Chaser can successfully land autonomously. Then, in the next couple years, we could see the real test: a launch atop an Atlas V rocket into orbit.

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